Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  Ysabet leaned back in her chair, her brown eyes bright with candlelight. “Presume away, princess.”

  Navi took a moment to breathe, to steady her hands, and then undid the clasp of her cloak. It fell to her feet. “We sail to war, and possibly to our deaths.”

  “Yes,” Ysabet agreed, rapt.

  “I told you in my tent that it has been too long since I’ve been loved kindly.” Navi slipped off her boots, undid her trousers, slid them off. Bare-legged in her tunic, she watched Ysabet’s mouth part, the curve of her lips.

  Ysabet’s chest rose faster. “Yes.”

  Navi unbuttoned her tunic’s collar, then drew it up over her head. Naked, she asked Ysabet a silent question.

  “Yes,” Ysabet whispered, and then watched in wonder as Navi settled gently in her lap.

  Ysabet’s hands came to her at once—one on her hip, the other fingering the ends of her hair. “My God, Navi,” she said hoarsely. “You will kill me this night. Look at you.”

  “Yes, look at me. See me when I tell you this.” Navi stroked the silken arches of Ysabet’s pale brows. “I also said in my tent that it was not only about lying with you, and you said the same.”

  She had never seen Ysabet’s face so soft, as if all her barbs, all her bravado, had melted away at Navi’s touch.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Navi lowered her mouth to Ysabet’s temple. “Is it possible to love someone you have known for only a few weeks?”

  “Yes. Yes.” Ysabet fumbled for Navi’s face, clumsy in her ardor. She kissed Navi’s chin, her jaw, her neck.

  “If I am to die soon,” said Navi, her eyes falling shut, “I would like to meet it with the memory of you in my mind.”

  Ysabet’s voice floated up to her, thick with emotion. “Yes.” She slid her hand up Navi’s bare back, tracing the scarred line of her spine. “Yes.” She drew Navi down for a kiss, and Navi whimpered against her mouth, for she felt silken and flushed in Ysabet’s arms, safe as she had so seldom felt. Even in war, there could be this—love, and hope, and the simplicity of pleasure.

  She laughed, joy bubbling to her toes. “Can you say nothing else?” she teased.

  Ysabet touched Navi’s face, looking up at her as if gazing upon all the world’s marvels. “Kiss me,” she said, a tiny plea in her voice, an incredulous little bend, as if she could not quite believe what she held.

  Navi smiled, ran her fingers once more through Ysabet’s soft white hair, and bent to obey.

  28

  Eliana

  “I cannot tell my father or my brothers, not yet, for I don’t want to raise their hopes prematurely. But I have been visited in secret by one of the Emperor’s lieutenants, and he says I am beautiful enough to earn a place in the Emperor’s palace as a favored guest! He may summon me today, in fact, and I know just what dress to wear, red like—”

  —The last journal entry of Demetra Vassos, human citizen of Elysium, dated April 3, Year 1018 of the Third Age

  In Eliana’s shapeless, quiet dream, a single word: Run.

  Her eyes flew open. Someone was dragging her across her bed, upending her pillows. She tried to wrench free and couldn’t. The hand around her ankle was firm and cold.

  She saw Corien’s face, how giddy it was, the manic edge of his smile. Her bedsheets tangled around her legs. He yanked her hard over the edge of her bed and stalked away, letting her fall.

  “Get up. And do something with that tangled hair of yours. You look feral.” He was rifling through her enormous wardrobe, shoving past gown after gown. “I have a gift for you, but you must be properly outfitted to receive it.”

  Eliana scrambled to her feet, looked quickly around her rooms. Her adatrox attendants stood blank-eyed in their white robes. Jessamyn was not there, no doubt sleeping at the Lyceum. Ostia’s light painted the windows, casting long shadows across the floor. She had buried her pride deep and felt nothing when she glanced out the window at the enormous dark stain of angry light fixed in the night sky.

  A shadow flickered at the corner of her eye. She turned to find the open door to her rooms—and a familiar silhouette.

  She had not seen Simon in too many days to count. She was not prepared for it. Her chest flared white-hot, and she flew at him, her anger clean and sharp, her fist raised to strike. She would not unwittingly summon her power, not this night. Her fury burned within an unbreakable cage. He could not get to her, but she would get to him.

  Simon blocked her with his forearm, and then something grabbed her own, wrenched her away from him, and flung her to the floor.

  She fell hard, head knocking against the tile, then looked up at the tilting world to see Corien’s ferocious expression. The white knives of his cheekbones, his black eyes reflecting none of Ostia’s light. He had not dressed to his usual standards. His thin white shirt hung loose around his pale torso. His hair was rumpled, and his lips wore a burgundy stain.

  “Get dressed,” he snapped.

  A gown awaited her on the bed, glittering like a discarded skin of jewels. She had seen it hanging in her wardrobe but had never touched it. A high-collared bodice in red, dark as a pool of blood and heavy with beadwork. A thick sash of black silk around the waist, fastened with a clasp of golden feathers. Black lace trimmed a narrow, plunging neckline, and the skirt was a layered sea of crimson silk.

  It was a gown fit for the Blood Queen.

  She hesitated, irrationally afraid of it.

  Quick footsteps crossed the room, and then Corien shoved her against the bed, tore at the sleeve of her nightgown. She wrenched herself away from him and then, unthinking, whirled around and slapped him.

  He grinned, the thin red line where her casting had cut his cheek fading quickly, then grabbed and turned her, shoving her face down into the gown’s glittering fabric.

  “I’m waiting,” he hissed against her ear, his breath hot and foul. He had been drinking, perhaps feasting in one of his dining halls with whatever lucky citizens had been selected to attend that night’s entertainment.

  Then he yanked her up and pushed her hard toward the center of the room, the gown clutched in her hands. In Ostia’s light, she dressed without shame. She found Simon’s silhouette, the faint gleam of his eyes. She locked on to him, held his gaze as she fumbled with the hooks of her bodice. Let them both look at her. Let them see her every scar, her every curve. All shame at her own nakedness had been beaten from her long ago. But her fingers shook as she tied the sash, and she felt worse with the gown’s folds around her, this gown that reminded her of the paintings in Corien’s gallery. She would have preferred to wear nothing.

  “At last.” Corien grabbed her arm, pulled her with him as he strode toward the door. He did not give her time to find shoes. “We have an appointment. You’ve nearly made us late for it.”

  They swept out of her rooms and into the corridor. The palace buzzed with noise. Servants and revelers bustled past them in plain tunics and neatly pressed coats. Faces drawn, desperate smiles thrown Corien’s way.

  Simon followed them as they descended one of the palace’s grand staircases. An entrance hall gleamed, brightly lit ballrooms circling it like gemstones on a crown. A cold fear was rising inside Eliana, so acute and swift that she felt the absurd urge to laugh.

  Corien tugged her down the steps, across the hall, through a set of doors, and outside into the night. His grip on her wrist was punishing, his pace relentless. She stumbled after him, breathless—and then, in the maze of courtyards and gardens encircling the palace, Simon did an extraordinary thing.

  He seized Corien’s arm, bringing them all to a halt.

  “My lord,” he said, leaning close, “I believe this to be a grave error. If she is killed—”

  Corien backhanded him so hard that he staggered, then caught himself on the thin trunk of a neat square topiary.

  “She won’t be
killed,” Corien called out, resuming his furious pace with Eliana in tow. “I don’t want to kill you. Do I, darling? No. I simply think you ought to have a good view of this. I think you ought to feel it in your bones. I think that when they come for you, you won’t be able to help fighting them. You’ll have to, or they’ll tear you apart with their teeth. And then what? You’ll burst, you wicked child. You’ll bleed power down every street.”

  “When who come for me?” Eliana asked. She tried to look over her shoulder for Simon, but then they were exiting the courtyards, and an escort of angelic guards in imperial armor fell into formation on either side of them, blocking her sight of all but the streets before her.

  Crowded with tents and makeshift candlelit altars, every thoroughfare and alleyway, every garden tucked between buildings, was lit as if for a celebration.

  There were strings of crackling galvanized lights, torches flaring merrily in their brackets, doors and windows thrown open to let in the cool air. A group of citizens, led by an orator wearing paper wings strapped around his torso, knelt at a fountain. Eliana watched in fascination as they raised their arms to the eerie bright sky in supplication to this thing they did not understand—a second moon, broad and close and menacing. They had heard the name the angels had given it. Whispers at parties, rumors passed from palace to markets, from soldier to servant. Ostia. Another Gate, perhaps. A second coming of angels—or of beasts.

  Corien passed through the crowds like a ship gliding through the sea, waves crashing apart in its wake. The people of Elysium abandoned their tents, their parties, and hurried after him. They called for the Emperor, begged him for blessings, for invitations to the palace. They even, Eliana was appalled to realize, began to call her name. They knew it: Eliana. Eliana.

  Sun Queen, they called her. The Furyborn Child!

  The din of their voices crashed against her ears. Her palms were slick within the cages of her castings. She wished desperately that she could reach for the Prophet and ask what Corien had planned, but she didn’t dare with him so close.

  Then, the air exploded with wailing sound.

  Eliana’s blood was ice in her veins. The horns of Vaera Bashta. The mournful notes crawled up her arms on thin needle-feet. The Prophet had told her of the prison’s cullings and assured her that Remy was still alive.

  But every time Eliana heard the horns, she remembered Remy whispering about a room underground and imagined him dead at a prisoner’s hand—throat torn open, head bashed against stone. The stomach she had healed reopened by some crude knife fashioned in the dark.

  Simon’s cruel words glinted in her mind: I shot him right in the gut.

  Corien stopped in a pentagonal plaza, each side marked by soaring arcades of white stone, exquisitely symmetrical. At each corner stood a broad pillar topped with a statue of an angel in flight or in battle. On the plaza’s far side, several angelic guards flanked a set of broad black doors.

  Corien released her to throw up his arms. Around them, the gaping crowd hushed. Some reached for him; others fell to their knees.

  “Elysium!” he cried. “Your rot will be cut away! Your filth will be scrubbed clean! Every lie you have told, every secret you have kept from me, will be revealed!” He turned, letting them all look at the shining white glory of his face, its mad grin. “For even a kind master must sometimes beat his hounds to remind them who holds the chain.”

  The crowd shifted, their smiles dimming.

  Vaera Bashta’s horns sounded once more—the culling’s final call.

  “Behold!” Corien cried, laughter shaking his voice. “And be cleansed!”

  Then the black doors swung open, revealing a dark, toothless mouth, stone steps descending into shadows.

  The gathered crowd understood at once. Their screams rose like the cries of hunted animals baying in dumb fear. They shoved past each other, pushed down the slow and trampled them. A great crush of bodies, fleeing fast.

  But not fast enough.

  Out of the doors poured a stream of darkness—bent and gaunt, scabbed and howling. Not crawlers, not cruciata, but humans who had been kept too long underground. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Beyond the plaza sounded the clank and grind of more doors opening, the distant swell of screams.

  Horror flooded Eliana in cold waves. She stepped back, but Corien was behind her. He caught her arms and pressed his cheek to hers.

  “I told them they could do anything they wanted.” His whisper shook with terrible choked mirth. “I slipped inside each of their minds and told them that if they wanted to be free of their cells forever, they would have to impress me. I do so like being entertained.”

  Eliana thought of Remy and felt her gorge rise. “Why are you doing this?”

  He turned her gently. “Because of you, Eliana,” he said, as if it were obvious. “You’re keeping secrets from me. I know it. That’s fine. I keep secrets from you too. But I can’t let you go unpunished for it. And I wonder if fighting through streets painted red with blood will awaken you as I cannot. It matters little to me how many in this city are killed today because of you, but I’m sure it matters to you. My tenderhearted princess. The Furyborn Child, I’ve heard them call you. Evocative. I do appreciate a poetic turn of phrase.”

  He gestured to one of the guards in their escort, who handed him a parcel wrapped in cloth. Corien pressed it into Eliana’s hands and kissed her cheek.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t let anyone kill you. But the rest of them…”

  In a blink, he was gone, as were the guards. Alone, unmissable in her red gown bright as blood, she immediately felt dozens of eyes upon her.

  The shape of the bundle she held was familiar. Quickly, she unwrapped it.

  Arabeth. Nox. Whistler. Tuora and Tempest.

  Her knives, clean and sheathed, clipped to a leather weapons belt. How she hated him for gifting them to her. Even in this chaos, on this awful night, she was glad to see them. Her only surviving friends.

  Mouth dry, hands shaking, she clipped the belt around her waist and ran. Elbowed her way through the teeming crowd, shoved past the people who recognized her and grabbed at her skirts. One wouldn’t let go—a wizened old man in iridescent brocaded finery. He grabbed her sash, pulled her to him.

  “Help us!” Drops of blood already painted his face. He groped for her castings. “Destroy them!”

  Eliana whipped Arabeth from her sheath and sliced him across his chest. He staggered back, cursing, and released her. She turned and fled, having no sense of where to run but unwilling to reach out for the Prophet. Corien would still be nearby. He was no marque; he could not vanish into thin air. He had simply concealed himself.

  She pumped her legs faster, her muscles already trembling. She had grown stronger during her weeks with the Prophet, but her former strength was still a distant memory. How the Dread of Orline would have laughed to see her now.

  Exiting the long arcade, gritting her teeth against the burn of her abused bare feet, she pushed her way down one street, then turned down another before emerging into another plaza, this one much larger than the first. Two metal hatches in the stone sat open. She raced past the nearest one just as a pale woman with ropes of matted hair jumped out of it. A hand grabbed her ankle. She fell hard, tore strips of skin from her hands. Turned around and plunged Arabeth into the woman’s throat. A strangled cry, and the woman collapsed, clutching the red river of her neck. Eliana rolled out from under her, yanked Arabeth free, and pushed herself to her feet. Her scraped palms stung; she wiped sweat from her eyes.

  A thump behind her. Eliana spun around, ducked the wild blow of another prisoner—a man with scarred fair skin, a white knife in his hand. His blade caught her arm, cut a thin stripe to her elbow.

  She cried out, ducked his second blow, thrust Arabeth at his neck. But he was fast. He struck Arabeth out of the air with his own knife, then pounced on her, kno
cking her to the ground. Her vision flickered. He pawed at her gown, dragged his tongue across her face. His breath was rancid, like meat left out to rot.

  She let him slobber at her throat as she gathered her strength, then jammed her knee into his groin. He howled with pain, and she grabbed Nox, plunged the fat blade into the man’s concave stomach.

  He fell atop her, the warm rush of his blood soaking her gown. She pushed him off, Nox in hand, found Arabeth smiling her crooked smile on the white flagstone, and ran.

  But there was no escaping Vaera Bashta. Everywhere she looked, ragged prisoners pounced and clawed, their wild cries tearing the air into strips. Two men went tumbling down a staircase, then scrambled after a clattering pistol.

  Eliana didn’t see who reached it first, but she heard the gunshot as she raced past. A boy darted past her, climbed up a drainpipe. The shape of his body jolted her, and for a moment, though his skin was darker, she thought it was Remy. An icy fist closed around her heart, squeezing hard as she ran. She hoped she would not find Remy. She hoped he was hiding in some gutter or under a staircase in the quiet dark. What would she do if she turned a corner and saw him changed? No longer the brother she had known, but a killer who dealt in blood instead of stories?

  The thought battered her as she ran, a terrible whirling fear that rose in her like a current. She felt a sting at her palms and glanced down to see her castings faintly aglow.

  She fisted her hands closed around them and ran up a broad flight of white steps, then up a narrow staircase set in the wall of a large apartment building with cruciata gargoyles yawning at each corner. She climbed until she found a high terrace, its walls frosted with scrolling white stonework. The air was quieter there, Elysium’s screams a distant cacophony. Under an arbor draped in ivy, she crouched, heart pounding, Arabeth clutched tightly in her right hand. She breathed until she felt it was safe, until the blood pulsing in her ears had slowed. Then, she formed a single clear thought: